In this episode, we dive into the strategies for positioning yourself, your brand, and your business in the online marketplace. Learn how to boost your visibility, define your niche, and effectively grow your audience or client base using social media.
Helen Hunter Mackenzie from Arizona, is a business growth strategist and positioning expert specializing in helping entrepreneurs build and scale sustainable, soul-driven six-figure, multiple-six-figure, and multimillion-dollar businesses.
With over 20 years of experience in healthcare startups and entrepreneurship, she combines strategic expertise with intuitive insight to help entrepreneurs achieve sustainable growth, increased profitability, and high-impact results.
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/eCokIV4XM7I
The Entrepreneurial Elevation Podcast and content posted by Kelley Beveridge is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Helen Hunter Mackenzie explains how entrepreneurs often misunderstand scaling as building a massive audience. She shares a "go small to go big" strategy by driving value for a specific niche and focusing on long-term client relationships.
[00:01:25] Kelley introduces Helen, highlighting her expertise as a business growth strategist specializing in soul-driven six and seven-figure businesses. Helen shares her passion for helping entrepreneurs position themselves in the crowded online marketplace.
[00:03:13] Helen emphasizes the importance of standing out in an oversaturated market by becoming an authority rather than an influencer, shifting the focus from personal branding to delivering value-driven content.
[00:06:00] She discusses how entrepreneurs can use niche clarity to enhance their authority. Helen explains that narrowing down a niche allows businesses to appeal directly to their ideal clients and create impactful messaging.
[00:11:16] Helen defines a niche as solving a specific problem for a specific group of people. She shares an example of how niching down to pet owners with flooring issues is more effective than targeting general homeowners.
[00:19:03] On mindset shifts, Helen encourages entrepreneurs to embrace the courage to niche down, let go of fear, and treat marketing strategies as experiments to learn what resonates with their audience.
[00:27:30] Helen advises entrepreneurs to focus on platforms where they naturally gravitate, emphasizing authenticity and leveraging their strengths to create relatable and engaging content.
[00:38:10] Helen stresses the importance of micro-commitments in audience-building, encouraging the use of opt-ins and interest-based sign-ups to test ideas before investing significant time or resources.
[00:42:17] Helen explains that scaling doesn’t require building a massive audience but rather creating tiered services that retain clients, deliver continuous value, and generate consistent income.
[00:50:00] Helen’s final advice encourages entrepreneurs to identify their ideal clients by asking, “Who could I help the most if I only got paid after delivering results?” She highlights the power of self-reflection and clarity in business.
Transcripts
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[00:00:21] But to me, a saner perspective is to say, coming from that, space of I'm helping a very, very specific person, how can I drive even more value to that person? So if I think of that, if I think of every person who comes into my business more as a client than a customer, even if I don't, or I should say as a member.
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[00:01:05] Okay, welcome fellow entrepreneurs and goal getters. to entrepreneurial elevation, unleashing greatness within with myself, your host, Kelley Beveridge, and my guest today, Helen Hunter Mackenzie, and I'm excited to have her on. I was just saying this to her in full transparency. I'm really going to be a student today, learning from her around the topic.
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[00:01:48] She specializes in helping entrepreneurs build and scale a sustainable soul driven. I love that soul driven six and seven figure businesses. She has over 20 years of experience in the [00:02:00] healthcare startups and entrepreneurship world. She has founded her own coaching consultancy and she's helped grow digital copywriting and design agencies to thrive.
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[00:02:19] Thanks. Thanks for having me. And yeah, thanks for the warm welcome. I'm excited to have this conversation. I love it.
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[00:02:30] And I might, I want to start off with what might seem like a simple, silly question. Yet, I'm just curious, we're going to be talking about our positioning ourself in the online market space. And I just think it's so relative because nowadays, obviously so much entrepreneurship to create visibility is using social media, is online.
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[00:03:02] That's a great question because when I think about how people view the online marketplace, I think when people talk about things like online business, I see it like the online world is.
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[00:03:40] But being able to position yourself uniquely online, when you think about how your behavior as a consumer or just a human being in the online space is different than your behavior when you walk out your door and go to the grocery store or something like that. It's so like scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, [00:04:00] scroll, like we're living in a society now where just everything is, if you don't catch people's attention in three seconds, you've lost them.
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[00:04:29] That totally interests me. That's exactly what I need. And that is really difficult to do in, yeah. We're recording this in 2024, but in 2025 and beyond, it's really difficult to establish that in people's minds because they're just Again, we all are. We're scrolling. I look at cat videos on Instagram, like fun or humorous things and things that really catch my eye from a business sense really have to be so finely tuned to something very specific that I'm looking for me to even [00:05:00] be interested in clicking over in the middle of my cat videos.
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[00:05:07] It makes sense. And I love your share, right? Because it's just so true. Thank you. And I like how you talked about that, though, that it's not an on, it's not that we have online businesses, it's that we're positioning ourself through it being a marketing channel. That is actually even just a different perspective on how to look at it, and then how to stand out and be unique so that we catch people's attention.
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[00:05:42] Yeah. Okay. So one of the most important things, this is something I'm really hammering home with my clients right now is it's just, this is really recent too.
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[00:06:23] So what I'm talking about very specifically is like, Influencer personality is that thing that we've all been trained on, which is like the know and trust factor, right? It's saying here, let me give you a window into my world. This is what I'm all about. These are the things that I like. So for instance, the thing you might see in my past feed would be like pictures of my cats, which I love my cats and my cats are great, but, and I'm not saying don't do that at all, shifting from that to.
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[00:07:13] And I'm such a wonderful person. Don't you want to join my world? Cause I'm so great. It's These are the results you're going to get when you take the time to download this. Because it's not just people's attention that is fractured. It's their time as well. And people are feeling overwhelmed, even just giving their email address for things.
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[00:07:50] And when I say like authority, it's like establishing yourself as the authority in this one very specific thing. And it doesn't have to be one specific [00:08:00] thing for your entire business, but it needs to be like for this piece of content, what is that one specific thing that this is going to help me achieve?
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[00:08:45] So the difference is that is the old style influencer. Blogger kind of content. And we are really needing to move away from that. Like people need to understand that kind of stuff is not catching people's attention again, not to say don't [00:09:00] ever, ever, ever do it. And so drawing my line in the sand is yes, I am going to share photos of my cats from time to time still.
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[00:09:25] She's a cat lover. Like me, let me sign up for her free opt in. Like literally that has nothing to do with people's. attention and their time and their ability to want to invest their attention and their time in you. So that to me is a huge, huge distinction for this next year and beyond.
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[00:09:46] And once again, like I'm just having a lot of awareness and thinking as you're speaking. Cause I post so many pictures about my dog, right? And it's, yep. How am I actually the authority? And I just created an opt in and I'm like, okay, I've never created an [00:10:00] opt in before, and I'm wanting to have people choose it so that I can give them value.
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[00:10:23] And so people really have that. It's gotta matter for me to be able to even give you my email. I'm not just going to give it away freely. And that's really, that's such good advice going from influencer to authority and still wanting to build trust and credibility, but it's more, how are we the authority?
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[00:11:00] And so can you share, I think like the what, why, and how of carving out your niche? So what is a niche, right? Why is it important? And then what are some tips on starting to discover what that is for ourselves in business and with our brand?
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[00:11:23] It's much more specific, I think, than what people, so typically people think of the niche as I serve women entrepreneurs from ages 35 to 65 who are like creative and soul led kind of thing. And that's fine. That's a good start. For instance, that for sure, that's part of my market. It's getting really, really specific so that you're thinking about, I'm going to give an example that's outside of that because I find that in this sort of like online space, it can get really easy to just keep gravitating towards that, almost that like ubiquitous, [00:12:00] homogenous kind of thing.
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[00:12:23] So I have to cover it with things. I have to get all creative. Like I cannot leave it at night. For instance, I have to pile heavy stuff on top of it, or I will come out in the morning and he's ripped everything up and there's like big shreds of carpet and I have to cut a new piece out and lay it.
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[00:13:10] So somebody who can specifically catch my eye, if I get a flyer in the mail that says, are your pets destroying your flooring? We specialize in, we have these special blah, blah, blahs. And again, I'm not a flooring expert. So it's not like I'm saying there may be something like that exists. I have not received the flyer yet, but that's the kind of thing that's going to catch my attention a lot more than just, do you need new carpeting or do you need your new flooring in your home?
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[00:14:17] So why is it important? Because if you look at the data, there is a significant percentage of your market that are pet owners, that their pets do chew up their flooring. So now you're capturing a hundred percent. Let's say the market is 50 percent or even 30%. You're capturing now 100 percent of that 30 percent market, right?
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[00:14:58] So if you're [00:15:00] targeting, let's say advertising on Facebook and you're just targeting every woman entrepreneur from the age of 35 to 65, who's like creative and follows people like Marie Forleo and blah, blah, blah, like that kind of thing, and you're not drilling down to, they have something very, very specific.
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[00:15:25] Yeah,
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[00:15:33] So I think people need to challenge themselves to, to drill down. So for years people have been trying to think almost what am I the best at? And the answer again, comes down to what am I the best at for a very specific person, for a very specific need. need and to courageously claim that specific piece of the market for yourself and say, so for instance, using that flooring [00:16:00] example again, it's not like you're never going to attract people who aren't pet owners.
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[00:16:27] So a question that I have been posing to clients recently too, is if you could only get paid after you got results for somebody. what would be the specific work that you would do because, and who would that person need to be? Cause then you're going to get the highest level of results with the people that you work with.
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[00:17:05] My niche is transformational entrepreneurs because the marketing and selling process is different for transformation. And so I know I can help people and they also have to have other characteristics as well. So it's really narrowing down. Again, if I could only get paid after I helped somebody get results, what would that person need to bring to the table?
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[00:17:43] Yeah, no, so great. I'm just sitting here taking notes, right?
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[00:18:05] And you use this word courageous. And I do believe it does take courage to be willing to claim our niche and then lean into it and speak about it and speak that messaging. And, when it comes to the mindset side of this, What would you say are some mindset shifts that's going to support entrepreneurs?
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[00:18:41] Yet it is a process I find for a lot of women because there's this fear of losing out, missing out on other people, maybe not making enough money, not being able to service everybody. I just want to help everybody. And so what do you think are some mindset shifts that would serve some people to realize, to [00:19:00] embrace as you start to niche down?
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[00:20:05] First of all, the key you have to find to me, every single, I don't want to say successful entrepreneur in terms of like just the world's idea of success, but people who are fulfilled, people who are getting the results they want out of their business and out of life and getting results with their clients and just feeling a sense of like stuff is working for me.
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[00:20:50] are not doing that well in their business anyway. So there it's that, like that person who wants, who says, Oh, I'm going to cut out X number percentage of the people in my local neighborhood if [00:21:00] I say I'm only for pet owners, yes. But right now you're literally speaking to none of those people. So it's just thinking, it's almost the question I ask myself that I think it comes from like acceptance and commitment therapy even is just like, how is this approach already working for you?
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[00:21:35] You're not attracting the right people. You're not attracting enough people. You're not attracting any people. How likely is it that using that same mindset is going to work in the future? It's, it doesn't really make logical sense. And we just don't, and by the way, I'm not saying that like in a judgmental way at all, it's just that the human mind.
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[00:22:21] Like in the startup world, if you're bringing new technology to market, you've got to understand that you've got to put it out there first and see how it lands with people that you can't get everything perfect behind the scenes. So then if, okay, let me treat this like an experiment, put it out there, get really tight on my messaging.
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[00:23:03] Mine does too, which again is why I have like structured practices to get me out of that. But I think again, basic as it sounds, unsexy as it sounds, that's the key.
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[00:23:35] And the thing I always like to say is if you don't know what you want, what are the chances of getting it? And so I have created a online course that I want to make accessible to everybody called the Success Achievement Blueprint Becoming a Great Goal Achiever. And it will guide you in getting clear on your vision and your values and aligning both of those two goals and [00:24:00] intentions and things that you really have a heart's desire for and are internally inspired to be in action towards.
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[00:24:27] And obviously a big part of that is who is important for you to become along that journey. And so the course helps you set goals. It helps you learn what you need to do to implement and achieve the goals, how to create your schedule around your values and the things that really matter to you. So you actually free up mental time and mental clutter and actual time, and it will really just give you the tools and the awareness tools, the mindset tools and the business tools and the actual tools just to support you in getting your goals and staying the [00:25:00] course.
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[00:25:22] and classes and actually being out in life, setting goals and achieving goals and what I've went through. And so it is, there's a lot of value jam packed into this course and I'm offering it at 67 Canadian dollars. And the reason why it's at such a low price is not because of the content or the value.
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[00:25:58] And the last thing I want to share is I [00:26:00] actually created this course a few years ago during COVID. While I was in lockdown in South Africa, I couldn't leave the house. I was working on my own business and I thought. What else can I do? And so I created this course in this little corner in the room that I was in because I didn't actually have Wi Fi.
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[00:26:38] So please check it out. Even if you know how to set goals, it's nice to have Somebody guide you through and get really crystal clear on what are you focusing on this year with some new tools in your tool belt to accelerate that growth and attract more of what you deserve into your life. And so just thank you so much.
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[00:27:22] And if that's not so true, and as you're speaking, I'm just sitting here thinking too, Yeah, as entrepreneurs, it really is about being willing to do things differently and embrace change and be coachable, right? And if something isn't working, being willing to push pause and say, Hey, what's going on here?
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[00:27:55] So let's say you are open to it and you have discovered your niche and you've [00:28:00] spent some time figuring what that is. And you're excited now to speak your message into the online market. How do we know which platform to use? Like, how do we know where to go to start actually sharing our message and what kind of content to put out there?
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[00:28:40] And I think just, yeah, pick, for me, it's like Facebook and Instagram and it's gravitating much more towards Instagram just because Facebook is, I don't know, the algorithm is like not as friendly as it used to be, at least for me. So it's looking at your own, it's saying, so it's asking yourself, first of all, if I'm only going to pick one or [00:29:00] two, and honestly, one is fine.
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[00:29:21] It's asking yourself, why, why are you gravitating towards what, which platform you're gravitating towards? And then it's saying, yeah, what are the results that I feel that I get when I do something on this platform? How do I feel? When I do something on this platform, and this is the sort of intangible thing, but I think it's so important to only choose things that you actually.
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[00:30:03] So I think that's. You've got to ask yourself, like, where do I enjoy being? Because something I've always said, and this is one of those intangible sort of woo woo spiritual things too though, is you're creating, especially when you're doing like transformational work, you're like a product based business and you're, maybe you have invented this really cool widget of some sort.
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[00:30:49] We're soul sisters or soul brothers or whatever it may be, soul siblings. And so again, if you're creating for another iteration of you in a different life, you in a different [00:31:00] circumstance, You've got to go to the platforms that you would be on. It's just a no brainer. Like I'm currently not active on LinkedIn because I just don't, I don't go there.
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[00:31:36] That caught my eye. Now I can start collecting a little like swipe file of things that I think are awesome because that's going to also appeal to my person. And that's also, so you're killing two birds with one stone when you only go to the platform that you gravitate towards because you're already there.
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[00:32:08] Yeah, for sure. And I love how you share it really is about where do you like to be and where do you like to hang out?
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[00:32:30] And I think what I'm getting from that too, is I will produce my best content. I will be my most authentic self. I will have great energy if I'm going somewhere where I like to be. So that makes sense when you give that advice to me. And I know for myself, moving into being someone who's sharing content online, which isn't something I'm used to doing, there could be procrastination or resistance, or I tell myself these stories.
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[00:33:20] Obviously, the more we do something, the more reps we put in, the better we get, right? The more confident we get. Now, the second part of this I want to ask is let's say you're doing all those things. How important it is to be, is it to be building our audience at the same time? Because I'm sitting here thinking I could be doing all those things.
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[00:33:57] Yeah. Okay. So that is a great, [00:34:00] yeah. And it reminds me of something like years, years ago before I started my business, like in, I was, it was like a side hustle and idea like this, I'm talking back in 2008 kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I worked with a coach who I wrote this book, which is not available anywhere now because it was a disaster.
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[00:34:36] So yeah, your point is like, so valid in that you can pour your energy into, if you do that sort of silo thing, it's like going back to the tech example, if you're over here in your, and tech companies do this all the time, by the way, the ones that don't succeed go into their little cocoon of all of their developers creating something amazing, but they've never [00:35:00] shared it with, there's certainly several ways to do it.
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[00:35:32] Like I have an opt in around that. I have a masterclass that I taught around that. And that's one way that you can attract people is by going to one very specific part of the process of the work that you do. But I would even say you can get really creative about this because. It can take a long time to create a masterclass like that.
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[00:36:16] I'm going to, and here's five different things that I think people, let's say it's five different topics that people need to know if they are my ideal client, or it's five different mindset shifts that they need to have, or it's a mixture of both. And now I'm going to create like five simple landing pages that are like, if you're interested in, I'm creating something amazing on this topic, share your interest by signing up for this.
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[00:37:01] And then what you're going to learn too is, People are more interested in this one thing than these, than all of these five things. This one is the winner. And then that becomes something that I can create even just an opt in around. And then that's something I can create my first product or program around.
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[00:37:32] Cause I think the biggest mistake that people make in terms of their own, you only have so much time, right? And I've definitely done this by the way, I'm not really done this myself. A million times is like poured 60 hours of your life into creating some piece of content, whether it's free or paid. And then you're so excited about it.
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[00:38:10] well.
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[00:38:30] Ask, you'll save yourself a lot of time. I really like that strategy, right? And then also too, it is like testing and just checking out different strategies in a way where it's not once again time consuming and all encompassing, yet where I can start to learn what is going to be best for my niche audience.
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[00:39:02] Don't decide for people what they need. Ask them. That's awesome. I love that advice.
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[00:40:01] They would do surveys of, for instance, people, like their show watching habits on TV, if they were going to bring a, let's say a UK special into the U. S. And they, so they would survey the audience and they would find that people did not answer. So they would hook them up to EEG's brain, like measuring their brain waves.
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[00:40:53] So I think that. important distinction cannot be emphasized enough because I [00:41:00] do see people thinking, Oh, let me ask my audience. And then they just, Literally ask their audience and people just won't tell you. They will not literally tell you how they're actually going to act until they're actually acting, if that makes sense.
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[00:41:21] I love how you word it like a micro commitment yet, like people will follow that more than not. And that's a beautiful distinction. And once again, saves time and gets us more. It gets me more of what I want. If I'm looking at it from my business perspective which is. building my audience and building my community so that I can give value. And it gives the person who's choosing into that micro commitment more of what they want to, because now they're moving towards the things that they desire. And that's a great distinction. I love that. And so I'm just curious, we've got to start wrapping up soon yet.
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[00:42:17] Okay. So that is such, that's a really juicy question and I know we're going to wrap up, so I won't. on about it, but I will say this, that I believe that most small businesses and again, micro businesses, your path to scaling is not going to be building a huge community. So it's the opposite of what people often think of as scaling.
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[00:43:11] It's an incredibly difficult thing to do. I'm not saying it's impossible and I'm definitely not saying. If that's what you want to do and your heart is set on having a huge community and you want to have a huge audience, go for it. But to me, a saner perspective is to say, coming from that space of I'm helping a very, very specific person, how can I drive even more value to that person?
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[00:44:03] And even that, I wouldn't even just say charge more, but also have a continuous level of service that you're offering someone. So maybe if they come in at a low level, then they go to a really high level, and then they go to a maintenance level. And you're bringing people through that customer journey, and then your maintenance level is where you're having dependable, consistent income, but you're again not thinking in terms of, oh, I've got to reach more and more people and have my audience huge.
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[00:44:56] So I hope that's making sense. I know that's a huge answer [00:45:00] to that question, but I really feel like unscale to scale. My philosophy. Go small to go big.
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[00:45:18] And so great advice. And okay. So Helen, I do have a few, three more questions I want to ask it before we do, are you able to share, like, where can people find you? Because let's say people are listening in my audience and they're, getting a lot of value, which I know they are because I am. How do they find you on social media speaking about the online marketplace?
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[00:45:42] Yeah, so you can find me at helenhuntermackenzie.com it's M A C K E N Z I E. So not M C. So yeah, they can find me there. They could find me on Facebook. I think I'm pretty much the only Helen Hunter Mackenzie.
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[00:46:26] I know I just said, don't worry about being an influencer or the no interest, but if you resonate with me, if you like my personality and you like everything that I've been talking about, you're going to like that because it's one of those things that just, that again, serves as the foundation for everything else.
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[00:46:57] Oh my gosh. Amazing. So everybody go and check out [00:47:00] Helen, right?
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[00:47:18] How would you define success?
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[00:47:45] And you're happy with your results. If that's the case for you, I consider you successful. That's what I consider for myself. Absolutely.
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[00:48:04] a great question. I think I would go back to be courageous, be bold about who you are.
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[00:48:29] So don't worry about people liking you or people approving of you. Be bold and courageous about who you are. I would say dig deep into your specific genius, think about the things that you are almost the things you take for granted that you think are so easy for you, realize those are not easy for other people.
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[00:49:10] It just, even in the commitments that you make to yourself that nobody else can see that are like literally if all I'm going to do, if I am working on that piece of content, I've asked people what they want, they've told me they love this thing. It's still going to take me like 30 or 60 hours or whatever to create this thing.
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[00:49:39] that. Imp. Yeah. Impress yourself. I love that. Okay. Last question.
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[00:49:53] Ooh, what a great question. Yeah, I would say if you do nothing else, ask yourself [00:50:00] that question that we talked about in the episode about if I could only help one kind of person and I could only get paid after I got results for them, take the time to answer that question.
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[00:50:43] And there's something so powerful in wrangling the mind to put things in black and white. So yeah, I would say again, answer that one question and see where that takes you.
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[00:51:15] Thank you for being here. Appreciate your time today. And just excited that we got to meet and are now becoming friends. So thanks for being here. Me too. Likewise. Thank you for having
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[00:51:27] Awesome. Have a good day, everybody.
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[00:51:34] You're all in one solution for building and scaling a successful
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[00:51:49] it's not
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[00:51:50] about the software.
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[00:52:04] And that's why we're excited to sponsor the entrepreneurial elevation podcast with Kelley Beveridge. Kelley is a thought leader who inspires and elevates entrepreneurs worldwide.
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[00:52:21] grow their practice. So join us on this journey. Tune into the Entrepreneurial Elevation podcast for insights and inspiration, and visit Coach Core to transform your coaching business today.
